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Katie Ledecky, Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Snoop Dogg, basketball, boxing, tennis, rowing, fencing, water polo, soccer, beach volleyball! The 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games have been lit!
So lit, in fact, that NBC is bragging about how much the Paris Olympic Games are disrupting workplaces all over America.
“From the viewership figures, America is captivated and there’s a lack of productivity in a lot of workplaces and we’re here ready for it. We set the goal early on to make sure that American is unproductive all day long,” Molly Solomon, president and executive producer for NBC Olympics Production, said on a press call.
That’s not hyperbole either (something NBCUniversal has been known to use).
“We did some research on our viewership,” Solomon continued. “One in four said their work productivity declines during the Olympics. Two out of three people say that the Olympics provide an escape. And half said they’re changing their daily routines to watch the Olympics.”
Through five days of competition and one day of ceremonies, the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games have accrued over 8 billion streaming minutes – more than the number of streaming minutes for for 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Olympics combined. And there are still 13 more days to go.
“If you look at it as a whole, approximately two-thirds of our viewership has come in prime time even though all the action happened live during the day,” said Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports. “And Peacock has been a huge part of that viewership. You’ve seen numbers in our press releases, on the competition days we’re regularly hitting 5 million streaming viewers. And they’re coming from everything for everything from live events to live shows, like Gold Zone and more.”
Cordella added, “It’s great to see in the afternoon, Paris Prime, as we’ve called it, where we’ve seen enormous numbers. Our strategy of making everything available live in the afternoon with fully produced, prime-time quality productions across our widest platforms, the biggest events, it’s something we’ve never done before.”
Thanks to streaming, the Olympics as we all have known it will never be the same.